Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (59 page)

It turned out they were there to warn me to stay away from computers
and telephones. If I started messing around with the equipment, they said, “There will be hell to pay!”

Then I was told I had to find a job in the prison within seventy-two hours, or they would find one for me—“and it won’t be very pleasant.”

A conversation with another prisoner turned up the interesting news that there was an opening for an inmate in the Telecom Department.

“Do you have any experience with phones, Mitnick?” the supervisor asked.

“Not too much,” I said. “I know how to plug it into a jack. But don’t worry, I’m a quick learner.”

He offered to train me.

For two days, my prison job at Lompoc was installing and repairing the prison’s telephones.

On the third day, the PA system blared,
“Mitnick to the Unit Manager’s office. Mitnick to the Unit Manager’s office.”

That didn’t sound good. When I got there, I was again confronted by the three suits of my “welcoming committee,” and they were livid. I tried to point out that they had ordered me to find a job, and the supervisor of the Telecom Department had taken me on.

They were pissed.

For the next several weeks, my new job was one of the worst in the prison: in the kitchen, washing pots and pans.

On January 21, 2000, in the early-morning hours, I was taken to Receiving and Discharge. I had served my time and was up for release. But I was stressed.

A few months before, a California State case against me, for attempting to trick the DMV into sending me photographs of Joseph Wernle, Joseph Ways, and Eric Heinz (aka Justin Petersen), had been dismissed, but it had left me feeling uneasy. As I waited to be set free, I worried that some other state or Federal agency might be lying in wait outside the gates to arrest me. I’d heard of prisoners being released only to be picked up for something else the moment they got out the door. I paced nervously back and forth in the holding cell, waiting.

When I finally walked out of Lompoc, I could hardly believe I was free to go. My mom and Aunt Chickie were there to pick me up. My dad had wanted to come, but he had suffered a mild heart attack and had a
recent triple bypass that ended in a severe staph infection, so he couldn’t make it. A mass of reporters and camera crews were there. Eric Corley and a large, excited crowd of “Free Kevin” fans were there, as well. As we stood talking, the prison sent out chaser vehicles to urge us farther from the prison grounds. But I didn’t care. I felt like a new man. Would what lay ahead be a repetition of my past? Or something quite different?

As it turned out, what lay ahead was a whole new life I could never have imagined.

I
t’s a challenge to describe my life since walking out of prison, but the story would not be complete without this update
.

In March 2000, two months after my release, a letter arrived from Senator Fred Thompson, asking me if I would fly to Washington to testify before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. I was surprised, delighted, and flattered that they recognized and respected my computer skills enough to want to hear my ideas about how to protect the government’s computer systems and networks. I had to ask the Probation Office for permission to travel to Washington, DC; I imagine I must have been one of the few people under the Office jurisdiction, if not the only one ever, who gave “testifying before a Senate committee” as a reason for requesting travel permission.

The topic was to be “Cyber Attack: Is the Government Safe?” My close friend and supporter Jack Biello had a good way with words and helped me craft my written testimony.

We’ve all seen committee meetings on C-SPAN, but being ushered in and sitting there, in front of that raised platform, with the familiar faces of nationally known political leaders peering down at you, ready to soak up your words—well, the experience has a magical quality about it.

The room was packed. I was the lead witness in a hearing chaired
by Senator Fred Thompson, with a panel that included Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Edwards. Though nervous at first when reading my testimony, I felt a flood of confidence surge through me when the Q&A started. Much to my own surprise, I apparently did an impressive job, even offering some jokes and being rewarded with laughter. (The text of my remarks is available online at
http://hsgac.senate.gov/030200_mitnick.htm
.)

Following my testimony, Senator Lieberman asked a question about my history of hacking. I responded by talking about how my motive had been to learn, not to profit or cause harm, and mentioned the case of that IRS agent, Richard Czubinski, whose conviction had been overturned when the court accepted his argument that he had accessed information only out of curiosity; he never intended to use or disclose the information.

Lieberman, obviously impressed by my testimony and by my reference to a legal precedent I had myself uncovered, suggested that I should become a lawyer.

“With my felony conviction, it’s unlikely I’d be admitted to the Bar,” I said. “But maybe one day you’ll be in a position to pardon me!”

That drew a big laugh.

It was as if a magic door had opened. People started calling me for speaking engagements. My career options seemed to be so severely limited by the conditions of my release that I had been near despair. And now, after my congressional testimony, the possibility of a lucrative speaking career was suddenly taking shape.

The only trouble was, I had terrible stage fright! It took more hours than I’d like to remember, and many thousands of dollars paid to a speaking coach, to help me overcome this fear.

As part of my fearful induction into public speaking, I joined the local Toastmasters group. Ironically, their meetings were held at General Telephone’s main offices in Thousand Oaks, where I’d once worked ever so briefly. My Toastmaster’s visitor pass gave me unfettered access to the offices inside the building. I couldn’t help but smile every time I walked in, thinking about how completely freaked out the folks in Security would be if they only knew. One of the interview requests I received around this time was from the U.S. Commission on National Security in the Twenty-first Century, a think tank that presents security
recommendations to Congress and the President. A pair of men from the Department of Defense, representing the commission, came to my apartment in Thousand Oaks and spent two days asking me how government and military computer networks could be made more secure.

To my surprise, I was also invited to appear on a number of news shows and talk shows. Suddenly I was a kind of media celebrity, giving interviews to leading international publications including the
Washington Post, Forbes, Newsweek, Time
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the
Guardian
. The online site Brill’s Content asked me to write a monthly column. Since I wasn’t allowed anywhere near a computer, the people at Brill’s said they would be willing to accept my drafts in longhand.

Meanwhile, other unusual job offers came pouring in as well. A security company wanted me to serve on its advisory board, and Paramount Studios invited me to consult on a possible new television series.

On hearing about these offers, however, my Probation Officer, Larry Hawley, informed me that I could not write articles about computer technology or participate in any other kind of work in which the topic was even discussed. He insisted that the Probation Office considered all such work to be “computer consulting,” which I was not allowed to do without his express permission. I countered that writing about a subject didn’t mean I was a consultant. The articles were intended for the general public. I was doing essentially the same type of work that former hacker Kevin Poulsen had done while he was on supervised release.

Undeterred, I sought out legal counsel. Sherman Ellison, an attorney friend, agreed to represent me pro bono. Naturally, this meant that I would have to plead my case before Judge Pfaelzer. Our more recent three-year-long judicial relationship had not done much to improve our mutual regard. Neither of us was glad to see the other.

“The Court had no doubt that we would be getting together with Mr. Mitnick again,” Judge Pfaelzer said. What she meant, of course, was that she had been expecting me to be brought in on new charges, or for violating the terms of my supervised release. But in the end, she made it clear that the attorneys would have to work it out among themselves and stressed that she did not want to see me back in her courtroom. She was obviously tired of the Mitnick case.

The Probation Office got the message: “Be a bit more flexible in the
Mitnick case so he doesn’t end up on calendar again.” The Probation Office started being more reasonable and accommodating toward me.

In the fall of 2000, just after I finished an interview on Bill Handel’s very popular morning show on Los Angeles radio station KFI-AM 640, I spoke with the station’s program director, David G. Hall. He explained that internationally syndicated talk-show host Art Bell would be retiring soon and wanted to suggest me to the syndicator, Premier Radio Networks, as his possible replacement. What an amazing compliment! I was stunned. I admitted that I had no experience in hosting talk radio and in fact had hardly ever listened to those shows myself, but I said I was willing to give it a try.

A few days later, I auditioned as a guest host on the
Tim & Neil
show, and David offered me my own show, to be called
The Darkside of the Internet
. Later I brought in my close friend Alex Kasperavicius to cohost with me. We exposed the dark corners of the Internet, telling listeners how to protect their privacy, and answering listeners’ call-in questions on how to best secure their personal computers, among other things, and talked about all kinds of cool sites and services that were appearing online.

David Hall, a recognized leader in radio programming, gave me only three words of advice: the show must be
entertaining, relevant
, and
informative
. Right away, I invited on guests like Steve Wozniak, John Draper, and even porn star Danni Ashe, who took her top off in the studio to show us all how hot she was. (Listen up, Howard Stern, I’m following in your footsteps!)

Because I still wasn’t allowed to use a computer, the station was kind enough to provide me with a producer/screener who would go beyond that job’s typical duties and help me with my Internet research. The hour-long show aired every Sunday. During that hour, the station went from being fourteenth in the Arbitron ratings to second. And defying the assumptions that Judge Pfaelzer had used to calculate the dollar amount of my restitution, I earned $1,000 for each show.

During my stint as a talk show host, J. J. Abrams, the famous film and television producer, contacted me. He said he was a fan and had even placed a “Free Kevin” bumper sticker on a set in his hit television series
Felicity
. After we met at a studio in Burbank, he invited me to do a small
cameo as an FBI agent on his show
Alias
, as an in-joke. In a script change, I ended up as a CIA agent working against the treacherous SD6.

The Federal government refused to give me permission to type on a working computer for the scene, so the prop master had to make sure the keyboard was disconnected. I appeared on camera with Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, and Greg Grunberg. It was awesome—one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had.

Around the summer of 2001, I got a phone call from a man named Eddie Muñoz, who knew of my past hacking exploits and wanted to hire me to fix a rather unusual problem. His highly successful service in providing “dancers” available on call in Las Vegas had dropped off very significantly. Eddie felt certain that the Mafia had hacked Sprint’s phone switch and reprogrammed it so that most of the calls to Eddie’s service would be diverted to other call-girl services run by the Mob.

Muñoz had filed a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) against Sprint, claiming that his business was suffering because the company had not secured its infrastructure properly against hackers. He wanted to hire me as an expert witness for the commission hearing. Initially I was skeptical that Sprint was at fault for Eddie’s declining revenue, but I agreed to testify about the company’s vulnerabilities.

During the hearing, I described how I had been hacking into phone companies for years, including Sprint. I explained that the CALRS system Sprint used for testing was similar to Pacific Bell’s SAS, but with what I thought was even better security: anyone trying to access the remote CALRS test units in each central office had to give the correct response to a challenge in order to get access. The system was programmed with
a hundred
different challenges—double digits from 00 to 99, each of which had its own response of four hex characters such as b7a6 or dd8c. Hard to crack… except through wiretapping or social engineering.

The way I’d gotten around it, I told the commission, was by calling the manufacturer of the system, Northern Telecom, claiming to be with Sprint’s Engineering Department, and saying I was building a custom testing tool that needed to communicate with the CALRS test units in each central office. The technician faxed me the “Seed List” of all one hundred challenges and responses.